Of all Titus de Bobula’s remaining works, this is the building that most astonishes architectural historians—the one architects study in their history classes—and we are pleased to say that it has had a good bit of money spent to stabilize and adapt it to its life as the National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural and Educational Center. For a long time it was the cathedral of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy, until a new cathedral was built in a more suburban section of Munhall.
Titus de Bobula himself designed this plaque, as we can tell because the lettering is in his own very distinctive hand—the same style of lettering he used to sign his drawings. It was not common for architects to put their names on their buildings, but Titus de Bobula was not a common architect.
The rectory has been decaying, and we hope there will be enough money to carry the rehabilitation of the church into the rectory. They were built as a set, and Bobula’s rendering of the pair shows that the rectory was originally designed for a slightly higher budget. The places where it was cheapened are precisely the parts that are decaying now.
From the Czechoslovak Review, January, 1920 (but it is clearly De Bobula’s original rendering); found at Wikimedia Commons.
Some of the wooden porch columns have been lost; the ones that remain are getting crumbly.
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